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2012-12-01

Next for iOS: better sharing

There is one important area where Android and Windows 8 are ahead of iOS: sharing data between applications [1]. Interestingly the foundations for improving things have already been laid. There are two parts when it comes to sharing: offering data and receiving data. The offering part already exists [2]: many apps have a “sharing” button. For example, things that can be done with the current page in Safari include: Create a bookmark, send the URL via email, tweet the URL.

Sharing in Safari on an iPhone

However, the receiving part is still limited. iOS has built-in support for email, Twitter and more, but you can’t plug into the system with your own app. That is likely to change soon, as explained in a tweet by @chpwn:

New, private iOS 6 feature Apple is using: remote view controllers. For example: the Mail compose view is now run in a separate process.

Consult [3] for details.
I can’t wait for Dropbox to be a sharing plugin, then you can send files to it from everywhere and from it to any other sharing plugin.
After the wish of better sharing has been fulfilled, I would love to be able to configure my default browser and my default maps app on iOS.